Facebook lets celebrities broadcast live to your News Feed

You can also see when your friends or other public figures start watching a stream.

Last quarter, Facebook reported a 40% increase in video shares on its network, fueled in part by an updated News Feed algorithm that boosts video rankings. Second, the live commenting aspect allows for more interaction between the two sides.

Facebook has a Periscope-like live-streaming video tool now available – but only for celebrities. Those who have recently looked at that celebrity’s posts will also receive a notification when a broadcast begins. This should trigger big audiences without annoying people who Liked an actor or athlete years ago and don’t really care.

There are already several ways for celebrities to interact with fans using live video – Meerkat and Periscope are two examples – but now a new, major competitor is throwing its hat into the live streaming ring too. Once they’re done, the videos will be safely uploaded to the celebrity’s Facebook page, where they can then play for any and all visitors.

The social network announced the feature called “Live” in a blog post Wednesday afternoon.

A small team in Facebook’s Menlo Park’s headquarters started working on Live in September. Twitter released its product Periscope in March, a few weeks after startup Meerkat gained the early praise and attention of users.

Facebook’s live video play is less about winning the live-streaming wars and more about owning the video format in its entirety. From that list, it seems the target viewer for Facebook’s push into live video is the Baby Boomer and Gen X. That could make for a disjointed experience if broadcasters discuss the comments on the stream that aren’t shown in real-time on the recording. Meerkat eventually conceded this wasn’t quite the case when it added Facebook support for watching some streams back in May.

Facebook is hoping that several stars use Live as soon as possible. Neither though have indicated how frequently users connect with their services.